Detroiter invents cooker that makes diabetic-friendly rice

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Swad Komanduri isn't trying to reinvent the wheel with his first startup. He's just trying to reinvent the rice cooker.

Komanduri came up with the idea after his father was a diagnosed with diabetes. His father is a vegetarian who eats Indian dishes composed mainly of rice, which his doctor suggested he cut from his diet.

The Komanduri family had a better idea. Instead of preparing the rice in traditional cookers, they started cooking the rice al dente, so it's still slightly firm. The end result is a significant reduction in its glycemic index -- as much as 30 percent. Within a few months, Komanduri's father returned to pre-diabetic health levels.

"It immediately improved my dad’s health," says Komanduri.

But cooking rice in a pot requires some maintenance. Given his family's proclivity for the grain, that added up to a couple of hours each day of watching rice cook.

"You can't just put it on the oven and go to the gym," he says.

So Komanduri, who worked in robotics in high school and got an engineering degree, started to tinker.

He is also a fellow with the 2014 class of Venture for America in Detroit. The nonprofit pairs promising college graduates with startups in economically challenged areas like Detroit in search of talent. Komanduri has spent the last two years working for NextEnergy and is nearing the end of his fellowship. He had been weighing different opportunities to launch his own company, and then the rice cooker idea popped into the center of his family’s life.

Komanduri launched a crowd-funding campaign to produce the initial prototypes with an eye on commercializing them within the next year. He hopes to raise $5,000.